iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Hey You!! Do you hate gaming on Windows? Do you like SteamOS? Do you want to have it on your PC (for free)? You might not know this but Valve has opened up SteamOS for compatible PCs. That means anyone with supported hardware can go ahead and install it on their machines.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

The processor in your phone started as beach sand. Yup, Literal sand! The stuff you build castles with. This sounds like a fun fact and it kinda is. But the actual process of going from sand to a working chip is one of the most expensive and difficult things humans have ever figured out.

sknexus.org

From Sand to Phones - Part 1: The Sand in Your Phone

From sand to silicon wafer: how chips are made, why the purity is absurd, and why only a few companies on Earth can do it at scale.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Bluetooth is named after a Viking king who had a blue tooth. And the logo is the initials of that king. Bluetooth is a really cool piece of technology. Look, Bluetooth 4.0 in 2010 made fitness bands possible by optimizing power draw so small devices could last months on a coin cell battery.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Your phone chip started as sand but not just any sand. Look, the silicon in your phone chip has to be pure and I mean 99.9999999 percent pure, to be exact. That's 9 nines. One impurity atom for every billion silicon atoms. For context, that is purer than almost anything humans produce at scale.

sknexus.org

From Sand to Phones - Part 1: The Sand in Your Phone

From sand to silicon wafer: how chips are made, why the purity is absurd, and why only a few companies on Earth can do it at scale.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Bad news if you were waiting for hardware prices to drop. Valve's engineers told Bloomberg this week that component prices are still getting worse. Not stabilizing but getting worse. A Valve engineer said retail prices are lagging bulk supply conditions by three to six months.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

One company controls over 90 percent of the global consumer drone market. Most people have never heard the name. DJI started in an apartment in 2006. A student who had crashed his toy helicopter too many times decided to build the flight controller that would fix the stability problem.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

There is a technology inside Valve's new VR headset that nobody else is doing. It is called Foveated Streaming and here is what it does. We know that our eyes can only focus on a small area at a time. Everything else in your vision is blurry whether you notice it or not.

sknexus.org

Valve’s Bold Bet on the Future of VR: Steam Frame Explained

Holiday season came early for gamers

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Most people don't appreciate how a three-person tech publication survives in the age of LLMs and short attention spans. AI scrapers continue to copy our stuff without permission, and desire for quality writing has gone down too. Still, WE WILL NOT SELL OUT.

sknexus.org

Why We’re Going Paid

We're going paid so our deepest work isn't treated as disposable. Most of SK NEXUS stays accessible, but here's what changes.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Is it just me who gets an itch every time new tech hardware gets launched? As someone who spends a lot of time reading about tech, it is natural to feel excited I guess. Just last year RAM prices have more than tripled. NVMe SSD prices have followed a similar pattern.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Xbox just laid off roughly half of id Software. 96 people in Texas and 40 remote roles gone. id Software made Doom and basically the modern FPS genre. Doom The Dark Ages just shipped in May. Their statement said the team is now about the same size it was when they made Doom 2016.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

AMD is fighting two giants at the same time. Intel in CPUs and Nvidia in GPUs. Both are bigger and better funded than AMD with with decades of experience. Most companies pick a single fight. AMD has no choice but to fight with two behemoths. And here is the thing:

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

99% of gamers are not playing on an RTX 5090. Most of us are on old hardware, mid-range cards, machines that were never supposed to run recent games. And yet somehow we still play. That is because of technologies most people have never heard of.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

If you've been looking at PC hardware prices lately, you've probably seen a price bloodbath for RAM and SSDs. The same thing is now happening to finished products. Apple recently raised prices across MacBooks and iPads because of higher RAM and storage costs. Xbox hardware prices are up too.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Our GPUs have a cool trick up their sleeves. We know about upscaling, where your graphics card renders fewer pixels and lets AI fill in the rest. Frame generation takes that idea one step further. Here, instead of inventing pixels, the GPU invents entire frames.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Even Apple, the company with one of the the strongest supply chains on the planet, says it can no longer shield customers from the impact of RAM prices. They just announced price increases across several MacBooks and iPads.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

When people talk about AI dominance, they talk about NVIDIA. When it comes to semiconductors, we have TSMC. But there's another company sitting quietly behind both of them. A company so important that if it disappeared tomorrow, advanced chip production across the planet would effectively stop.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

While people are enraged over prices for the Steam Machine there is something to celebrate. Turns out now Valve just confirmed that you can use SteamOS for you own machines starting the latest 3.8 update that got pushed.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Valve just officially launched the Steam Machine starting at $1,049. We have 4 options to choose from: 1. 512GB model for 1,049 2. 512GB model with Steam Controller for 1,128 3. 2TB model for $1,349 4. 2TB model with Steam Controller for $1,428

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

NVIDIA started out as a hardware company but today its software is the bigger contributor to its recent success. Gamers like me know NVIDIA as the company behind GeForce graphics cards but that changed years ago. Now AI chips and AI supercomputers are NVIDIA's main hardware offerings.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Valve's new Steam Controller is so popular that if you reserve today, you may not get it until next year. This isn't limited-ed item or a luxury gadget. We're talking about a gaming controller. Valve says demand grew so quickly that new reservations are now showing estimates for next year.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

All of us know about Apple, Intel and NVIDIA. These trillion-dollar tech giants are hard to ignore even for the non-techies. But there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of the company that all of them depend on, that is TSMC. TSMC is not an AI company, nor does it do social media.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Your GPU is kinda lying to you and you probably don't know. If you've played a modern game recently, whether on a PC, a PS5 Pro, or even a handheld, there's a good chance the image you're looking at was never fully rendered by your hardware. Some of those pixels were probably created by AI.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Most people don't know (or care) about their operating system. They don't even know what OS means. They just want to buy a Steam Deck and have their games working. For decades, Desktop Linux was only popular among a small niche of people who took operating systems pretty seriously.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Intel offering value processors wasn't on my 2026 bingo card. For years, the CPU market was AMD pushing forward while Intel tried to explain why the next generation would be better. But that might be changing because Intel's new Core Ultra 270K Plus packs 24 cores and launches at $299.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Yes guys, we have more rumors around the Steam Machine. A new leak suggests Valve could officially announce the Steam Machine on June 23, with reservations reportedly opening a week later. Nothing is confirmed yet, but if we trust the leaker, we may be less than two weeks away from launch.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

What comes to mind when someone mentions a "gamer"? A kid yelling into a headset? A PlayStation in the living room? A sweaty PC gamer locked in his mancave? Turns out the biggest gaming platform in the world isn't Sony, Microsoft, or evne Nintendo but it is the phone sitting in your pocket.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Most of us use GPS dozens of times every day without ever thinking about it. It powers every app from Uber, Google Maps, and even banks now. The tech just works. You open an app, tap a button, and somehow your phone knows exactly where you are. So, I went a bit deep into how GPS actually works.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

AMD was supposed to be dead. Back in 2015, its stock traded for less than $2. Intel dominated CPUs. NVIDIA dominated GPUs. AMD was losing money, losing market share, and fighting off bankruptcy rumors. Fast forward to 2026 and the story looks very different.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

MacBook Neo became one of Apple's biggest surprises of 2026. The company reportedly had to double production. The MacBook Neo 2 is rumored to arrive next year with Apple's A19 Pro chip and 12GB of unified memory.

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Reposted by Yousaf Babur

Kate Cox @kcoxdc.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I am constantly just so *annoyed* that the worst, scammiest people mean none of us can have nice things ever. www.theverge.com/games/947741...

theverge.com

Valve is phasing out physical Steam gift cards due to scammers

Valve says “scammers have adapted.”

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Steam Deck was an easy recommendation when it came to handhelds. Well, Valve just raised Steam Deck OLED prices by more than 40%. The Steam Deck 512GB model jumped to $789. The 1TB version now sits at $949, that's laptop money.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo is making rounds. It was supposed to be Apple’s "budget" laptop. Instead, it is becoming one of the biggest hits. Apple shipped 1.1 million Neo units in just a few weeks after launch and demand has been so high that some retailers are struggling to keep it in stock.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Last year, Arduino was bought by Qualcomm. If you've ever built a robot in school or a smart home project, chances are Arduino was involved. The palm-sized microcontroller has changed hardware for many and has been a trusty friend for tinkerers like me.

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Reposted by Yousaf Babur

Saqib Tahir @saqibtahirpk.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

People keep treating prediction market odds like polling data. They look similar. Both move over time, both seem to reflect what the public expects. Would you trust a number more if it had a dollar sign behind it? www.sknexus.org/p/truth-infr...

sknexus.org

Prediction Markets - Part 2: When Odds Become the News

Prediction market odds are being cited as news before events even happen. How speculation is quietly becoming the lens we read reality through.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

It won’t be wrong to say that DJI owns the sky. They sell around 70-90% of drones around the world! That market dominance sounds great until you realize most of its competitors are either dead or pivoted into something else.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

MacBook Neo may be the most important laptop Apple has launched in years. And no, it's not because they shoved AI into every corner. It's simply because at $599, it answers a question many of us have been asking for years: "What if Apple made a laptop most people could actually afford?"

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

The Steam Machine is finally coming this summer. Funny thing is, the biggest challenge is still the price. And we still don't know it yet :/ RAM and storage shortages have gotten so bad that even Valve seems hesitant to reveal what these devices will cost.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Intel went from “Chipzilla” to getting clowned on real fast. Ryzen punched AMD back into dominance, Intel CPUs literally started cooking themselves alive :p Now Intel is back with a 24-core CPU for $299. This is the first time in years that Intel’s “comeback” doesn’t sound like pure corpospeak.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

So, Googlebooks would now succeed Chromebooks. Apparently, these new laptops come with a new operating system that could natively run Android apps. Qualcomm, Mediatek and Intel are onboard on the CPU side for these laptops. There weren’t a lot of details about the OS atm however.

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Reposted by Yousaf Babur

nilay patel @reckless.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

When the dogfooding is dog food

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

This is some of the best hardware news in recent times. AMD just announced FSR4 support for their older-gen cards. The Radeon 7000 series would get FSR4 support later this year, followed by the 6000 series.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Intel might actually be back. And I did not expect to say that in 2026. A $299 CPU with 24 cores would’ve sounded insane just a year ago. Yet Intel’s new 270K Plus is out here beating AMD chips twice its price in productivity workloads. The ironic part? Intel is now the “value” option :p

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

USB-C was supposed to end cable confusion. Instead it created a whole new type of confusion. The biggest misconception is that people think all USB-C cables are the same. They are not.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

TCL just showed off a screen capable of going down to 0.1 hertz. It’s really cool that the display can switch between 0.1 Hz to 120 Hz. For laptops, it will be a good thing because it saves battery reportedly adding over an hour of video playback. LG has also started rolling out such displays.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo might not stay $599 for long. The problem with the Neo is that it is selling too well. Even more than what Apple estimated themselves. Apple reportedly planned around 5-6 million units initially but now may double production because of extra demand.

sknexus.org

The Best Laptop of the Decade? It Runs on a Phone Chip - MacBook Neo is Here

Apple's $599 MacBook Neo uses an iPhone chip that beats Intel and AMD at its price. Here's why it exists and who it's actually for.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Nintendo just raised the Switch 2 price to $499. And honestly, this AI hardware crisis is now hitting gaming properly. Nintendo says memory chip prices and tariffs are hurting profits. Sony is saying similar things around the PS5 and future PlayStation hardware too.

open.substack.com

Why RAM Prices Jumped 400%

A bubble is causing your wallet to burst

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Steam Controller just got live with a queue system now. The controller sold out almost instantly and scalpers started flipping a $99 controller for absurd prices. Valve reservations just went out live. What this means is that you won’t actually buy the controller immediately.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

TSMC just made a wind energy deal because they because of energy fears. The company alone uses nearly 10% of the Taiwan’s total electricity. By 2030, that number could apparently reach almost 25%. And this comes during a pretty ugly global energy situation.

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Kernel-level anti-cheats are basically running your games on “god mode”. Games like Valorant use software like Vanguard anti-cheat that operate deep inside your computer. That means they can see and control almost everything on your PC.

sknexus.org

How Far Is Too Far: War Against Cheaters

Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat

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Yousaf Babur @ybabur.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Steam Controller just dropped and it basically vanished. Within ~30 minutes of launch, the Steam controller was sold out on Valve’s store. People were stuck spamming checkout, getting errors, refreshing like crazy. Some eventually got through but most didn’t.

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